Good Versus Bad Pain: Knowing When to Push and When to Pull Back

Ever wake up after a tough workout feeling that “hurt so good” sensation, only to find yourself limping around for days? Not all pain is created equal, and knowing the difference between the kind that builds you up and the kind that breaks you down can be the key to avoiding injury and making real progress in your fitness journey.

In this episode of HealthSpan Digest, I dive deep into the world of pain—what it is, how it works, and why it’s such a powerful tool for anyone pursuing a healthier, more vibrant life. I share a personal story about a run that left me more than just a little sore, illustrating the fine line between pushing your limits and pushing too far.

We’ll explore:

•The difference between good pain (like muscle soreness) and bad pain (like tendinitis).

•How pain acts as a feedback mechanism, guiding your fitness progress.

•Tips on how to respond to both good and bad pain to keep you on the path to better health.

Whether you’re a seasoned athlete or just getting back into the groove, this episode will equip you with the knowledge you need to train smarter, avoid injuries, and extend your healthspan. Tune in and learn how to embrace the right kind of pain and steer clear of the wrong kind.

Listen now and start making pain work for you, not against you!

Want to support this advertiser free show? Please do ---> Buy Me a Coffee
Healthspan coaching consultations, programs, speaker inquiries
Monthly Healthspan PhysioCoaching Newsletter Sign-up
Subscribe: Healthspan YouTube Channel / Video Episodes

Transcript

Aaron Shaw (00:00)
I'm willing to bet that you woke up some mornings with some soreness, some aches and pains from working out or from doing an activity that is physically challenging, hiking, maybe playing a sport, lifting weights. And you would say that that is a hurt so good. You feel like your muscles have been worked a little bit sore, feels good to be a little bit sore. But I also bet you've had times where you've realized you have some discomfort, some soreness, some pain, and it doesn't feel so good. Maybe it's after.

doing a sport you haven't done in a while, doing an activity that you haven't done in a while. And it's lasted for days and days and days and maybe even weeks, There is a difference between pain. Not all pain is the same. And I'm going to call some pain good and some pain, not good. Some, some pain we're going to say is just bad pain. Today we're to break down the difference between the kinds of pain, kind of pains that really kind of build us up or a part of a progress, let's say.

And also the type of pain that indicates damage that kind of breaks us down and risks our health, risks our performance, risks our healthspan.

Welcome to HealthSpan Digest. This is your go -to podcast for living longer, more vibrant, healthy life. I'm your host. My name is Aaron Shaw and I help my rehab and coaching clients recover from injuries and improve performance, fitness, live a longer life, a longer, healthier, more vibrant life, which I refer to as HealthSpan. And HealthSpan is the length of time within our lifespan that we are healthy, active, durable, strong, feel good, feel confident.

necessarily, I have to work with clients, work with people and myself on leaning into discomfort, leaning into pain because there is some good pain and we need to learn how to lean into the good pain thoughtfully, carefully while avoiding the bad pain. I have to, again, I have to explain this to, especially my patients that I work with, that being uncomfortable is a kind of part of the process, but we need to be

intentional about where pain is, how intense it is, define really like what type of pain is it and what is that message saying to us. Today, we're going to dive into the crucial topic that we're all familiar with and we're going to learn how to differentiate between good and bad. We'll explore what pain is, how it works in just plain English and layman's terms, why it's valuable and how we can use this knowledge to enhance our fitness, our performance, our activity.

and avoid injury. Speaking of injury, I'm going to start with a painful story of really overdoing it, is kind of one of my telltale skills that I have is overdoing it from time to time. But it's really kind of reminded me that differentiating between good and bad pain isn't always black and white. And when you're in the heat of the moment, the heat of an activity, can be challenging even for those of us that

are active and really studied pain for decades can kind of overstep the balance sometimes. So a few months ago, I was visiting my in -laws down in the Florida Keys and I decided to go for a run. I haven't been for a run for at least a year, at least a year before that. My cardiovascular activity is cycling and I lift weights, but I do not run. I have run in the past, but it's been

Well over a year, I have what I would say is really good cardiovascular health. have good physical stamina, but my body is not used to running, but we were traveling and don't travel with my bike.

So I was thinking, I'm just going to get up in the morning, throw my shoes, go for a run before it gets super hot out and break a sweat. I knew, I absolutely knew going into this that I'm probably going to be sore. I'm just not used to the impact of the ground. I'm not used to that kind of running. So I knew I was going to be sore. knew I would have pain.

Unfortunately, true to form again, I went for a really robust run, felt good, at least until like the mile or so. But I really had no idea on what was really waiting for me over the next day or so. Let's talk about pain. What is pain? Really pain is, a really complex experience for us. It's both physical and you know, we have emotional responses to pain.

But if we think about it as communication, we think about it as a message, perhaps an alarm system going off that's telling us that something isn't right. Something is being damaged. Something is being overloaded. So our muscles, our bones, our tendons, our ligaments, our nerves, our skin, head to toe, we have a certain amount of durability, a certain amount of strength to withstand life.

The bumps and bruises of life, the physical demands of life. And when we are functioning below our overall capacity, we're in this kind of a safe zone. These pain signals don't need to really communicate anything. So we don't feel pain. We don't feel uncomfortable. And generally speaking, if you've, if you're not recovering from an injury, but you're otherwise feeling pretty good, you're sitting on the couch, sprawled out, you're lying in bed, you feel fine. Your pain signals, this, this messaging system.

is going to be sitting there dormant, not really doing anything. There's no reason for it to give you a pain signal.

But when it does turn on, when it does give you a signal, that is a way of our brain saying, Hey, something just happened. Something has stressed some of our body system in a way that is beyond what is capable of tolerating, or it's right on that line of not being able to tolerate it. So if we imagine that pain is just messages from our brain that goes through our spinal cord.

to every tip of our fingers and toes and all points in between that tells us, it interprets information from our body and just says, hey, we need to pay attention to your ankle, your quad, your back, your neck. the sensation of discomfort is an opportunity for us to change our behavior. Or.

It's also an opportunity to lean into the behavior and continue doing it if you're doing it with intention in a really careful, measured way.

All of these messages are transmitted through our pathways in our nervous system, which is far too complex to go over here in the next 15 minutes of this podcast. But just know that it is, if we think about discomfort as just a message and it is perhaps a fleeting opportunity to be thoughtful about what we're doing. Obviously there are times when you trip and fall, you feel pain when you hit the ground.

you break your wrist, you don't really have an opportunity to change what has just happened because it happened so quickly. You have what we'll call an acute injury. So that does happen. And those acute injuries are tough because sometimes there's nothing we can really do about it. And we go immediately into how do we fix it? How do we get help? But there are also times when the discomfort, this pain signal kind of starts to slowly ramp up. And we do have a chance to think about what we're doing before we

keep going down this running path, if you will. But there are two types of pain, broadly speaking, that we'll talk about. One is acute pain. And again, this is the short -term pain, that there's a pain that arises suddenly, quickly, often. And this is falling down on hidden ground. It's stubbing your toe. It's, you know, walking through the living room and hitting your shin on the coffee table. And it hurts like crazy. And that acute pain is

sometimes it can resolve in a few minutes. So again, if you hit your shin on the coffee table, it can hurt like crazy for a couple of minutes. And then sometimes it just kind of resolves no permanent damage. You may have a bruise to show for it for the next couple of days, but ultimately it's acute. It's short term. alternatively, you could be playing tennis or lifting weights. And after you get done, you feel.

something beyond just soreness, but like really pain, like at your joint, at your elbow, for say, let's say your tennis elbow, if you will. And that, if it just comes on quickly, leaves quickly, we're going to call that acute pain. Chronic pain on the other hand, lasts many days, unfortunately many weeks for some people, many years. There are actually pain syndromes out there where your body will give you

these pain messages as if there's a, you know, damage is happening immediately, even though the actual insult to the tissue, the insult to our body that caused the pain is long since gone. But that message system that's telling you that something's wrong, something needs to change is kind of stuck. For those of us that are old enough to think of records, sometimes a record would skip and play the same, three or four seconds of a tune again and again and again, just sort of stuck and stuck and stuck.

that can happen in a sense with these pain pathways with the nervous system as well, you kind of get stuck, your body just shooting out these pain messages to you saying, hey, you're in pain, you're in pain. It can be incredibly debilitating and sadly, ruining lives when people feel chronic pain. So pain is on the spectrum of duration, obviously on a spectrum of intensity. But ultimately we have to look at pain as being valuable. There's a book,

called the gift of pain by, at least in part it was by Dr. Paul Brand. It's a really old book, I love this term, the gift of pain, but pain is, it's an opportunity. It's a feedback mechanism. Just like, if you're lifting weights, one feedback mechanism is how much weight you can lift. So you can lift a heavier weight and it's a little feedback like, I'm stronger or I'm weaker.

pain is a feedback mechanism and pain is a gift. It's a gift. It's a message. this specifically this book and Dr. Paul Brand was talking about leprosy patients who don't have pain or they don't really perceive pain. So they had a whole bunch of life changing problems. Again, these are people with leprosy. It was because they didn't have this feedback mechanism that would help them protect themselves when they get injured. When there was a

threat to their system in some sort of physical system in some sort of way. And so those that those of us that do feel pain can kind of look at it as a gift if we know how to do something with this information. So pain is a protective function. And it's also the flip side of that is that it's really an indicator of progress. So for those of us that are pursuing fitness pursuits, we know what aches and pains of a hard workout is.

what that feels like. And there is this good sensation when we push hard and we realize that for the days to come, maybe a day or two after that, you feel a little bit of soreness. Your muscles feel tender to the touch even. is, it's really an indicator that yes, you've caused some microscopic, small damage to the muscles, but when done well, when loaded correctly,

Your body can actually adapt to that. And so we take that soreness that we feel in our muscles and we, in the emotional response for us, and even like the intelligent response for us could say, Hey, I've damaged my muscles. did it intentionally. did it. You know, with very specific loading, either, you know, intensity of running or intensity of riding or intensity of lifting weights, whatever that may be. And I was thoughtful about it, but I knew I pushed it pretty hard. I know I damaged the muscles a little bit and they're a little sore.

But we also know that that is what stimulates tissue adaptation. So that pain that we feel is productive. is, yes, it's sore and yes, it's uncomfortable, but it is an indicator of progress. It's a guidance for improvement, if you will. And as long as we take this information and make informed decisions on our training plan or on our safety, then we are really utilizing that gift of pain that we feel.

Now, back when I was running and did that, what ended up being about five mile run that towards like the last little bit of my run, I knew, I knew I was in deep, deep trouble because I was already feeling discomfort in my quads before I was even finished with the run. And I wasn't necessarily tired that tired, from a cardiovascular standpoint, but I knew I overdid it and I knew I was going to be sore. And so by the afternoon I was already.

struggling to sit down and stand up because my legs were really sore and my ankles were sore. So there were two different things going on. My quadriceps, my muscles were sore and my ankles like right around my joints where my tendons are was really starting to get more and more sore. And I was reminded for the next several days, I'm talking like three to four, maybe even the fifth day of still feeling some discomfort that I did too much. So there is good pain.

And there's bad pain, but it's not an absolute, it's not like flipping light switch on and off. It's more like a dimmer switch. So you can feel, you know, some of my muscle fibers, some of my quadriceps muscles were definitely overloaded, definitely had muscle soreness, but I also had some, you know, really some borderline injury almost around my ankles. And that is bad pain that I had to modify my activity, had to kind of really think through the next week or so what I was doing for

exercises because I knew I had really overdone it. So pain is, again, it was an opportunity, in this case, was a reflective opportunity for me look back and realize that was dumb, that was not worth it.

Let's dig in a little bit to good pain. Good pain, want us to think about is the soreness that's associated with muscle growth and adaptation. Good pain is our body positively responding to exercise. And you may already be familiar with this term. It's often called DOMS, delayed onset muscle soreness. And that is when 24 to 48 hours after doing a challenging workout, especially if it's doing exercises that you're unfamiliar with or

a really intense exercise session, or it may even be a sport that you maybe are really familiar with, but you just haven't done it in a while. So your muscles aren't accustomed to doing that. You can have sore muscles, delayed onset muscle soreness, because typically you feel pretty good in the moment when you're doing it, when you're exercising, but then later you feel sore. That is for those of us that enjoy that sense of what we're going to call progress, pretty accustomed to it, kind of search it out. It's nice to feel a little bit sore.

that's the hurt so good sort of sensation. So we kind of want that sometimes. The characteristics of this good pain would be a dull ache and it's really localized around the muscles that you're working. It is not stabbing pain. It is not sharp pain.

Recognizing this pain may help us realize that we're on the right track, activating the right muscles, activating the muscles that we want to activate and feeling them change, feeling them adapt. It can be challenging to really finesse this. As in my running example, I feel like there was a moment there where I had probably just the right stress for my quadriceps and not too much to really make my ankles painful. So there's an art in science to doing this, but generally speaking, we want that on occasion, that good pain. We're asking the tissue to adapt.

So pain can be good. Speaking of good pain, if you take a moment, check out my YouTube channel, HealthSpan Digest, subscribe to that, make a comment on any of the videos that I have on there, and I will make more videos specific to what you asked me to make videos on. So check out my YouTube channel, HealthSpan Digest. Super appreciate that. Now let's move on to bad pain.

Bad pain is when we've really exceeded the capacity of our muscles, joints, tendons, nervous system, ligaments to tolerate what we're asking you to do. Bad pain really requires medical attention. I mean, I think that's the safest way to kind of start is that if you feel true pain,

that is intense. And obviously if it's really acute, meaning you just fall down and you feel significant pain, get medical attention. Do not mess around with it. Worst case scenario, you get a doctor or a professional to look at it and they say, no, you're fine. It'll go, you know, the pain is going to go away. You've sprained something or whatever it is, get it checked out. Bad pain is typically sharp. It's often sudden. And this is a

big one that I think we can all kind of assess ourselves with, it is typically around a joint or a tendon. So if we think about, think about our elbow, for example, if you think, if you feel your elbow and you can kind of feel it's kind of pretty bony, but on the inside of your elbow, on the outside of your elbow, there's a pretty major tendons that your muscles attached to. And this is where people can have tendonitis, call that golfer's elbow or tennis elbow. And if you are either

playing golf or tennis or you're lifting weights or you're doing a physical activity and you feel pain right there. It's like right at your elbow joint and if you press on the bones there, it's really tender or even sharp. Perhaps you have a sharp sensation. That is bad pain. So that would be indicative of potential tendonitis or tendon damage with the tendon, the tendon itself with a tendon attached to the bone.

That is different than if you feel further down your forearm, kind of in the meaty part of your forearm where your muscles are. if you kind of press in there a little bit, and if you feel some soreness in there, that's probably good pain. is probably, again, this is generally speaking, probably your muscles. Your muscles have been overloaded. The cool thing about muscles is that there's great blood flow in them. So they tend to recover quickly. Your body can kind of flush out any of the damage, patch up the damage pretty quickly.

and you're on your way in a few days, you get through that delayed onset muscle soreness. But if you are feeling pain at a joint, that is bad pain. And this tendon pain can take weeks and months and sometimes a year or more to fully recover, to fully regain full strength of that. So that is bad pain. Oftentimes the causes of bad pain, unfortunately, is sometimes it happens when people are trying to be healthy.

trying to exercise, trying to do activities that are going to make them live longer and feel more vibrant and feel more durable. And they tend to go too hard too soon. And I can appreciate this because I've worked with lot of clients that go through the same process or certainly a lot of patients that have, you know, they come in to see me for treatment and it's because they started going back to the gym or they started going back playing tennis or playing golf or started back doing some activity and

they just exceeded, they went too quickly. And so maybe their muscles adapted pretty well. Maybe they're starting to feel a little bit fitter, a little bit healthier, and they kept pushing a little bit faster than what their tendons could tolerate. And so the muscle tends to get stronger a lot faster than the tendons can actually tolerate. So the muscle improves, people feel strong, people feel good, keep on pushing, you know, more weight, more resistance, going to the gym more often or doing a new activity more often, the tendons are slower to adapt.

all of sudden the tendons get angry, you've got bad pain. And this really stinks because it's, no good deed goes unpunished. Like people are trying to do the right things for your health and you exceed your capacity. You end up with bad pain. You end up with tendonitis and it takes time for that to recover. Unfortunately.

Bad pain is again, it's sharp stabbing, sometimes burning sensation tends to be intense and really localized. Again, it's also at, at a joint. in my case, it was my ankle joints from running. was definitely not my calf muscles. was precisely my ankle joint and my, my Achilles tendon was very involved as well. So that was bad pain, not the place that I wanted to have pain, little spooky cause I knew the consequences of that.

Another unique feature about bad pain is that it often gets worse with activity. That's a sign that the tissue is so damaged that it can't tolerate any activity at all or very minimal activity. So if pain gets worse with activity, it is often bad pain. It is often a sign of more significant tissue damage.

If bad pain is associated with swelling, with bruising, with a true loss of function, there is significant tissue damage. That is bad pain. There's a problem. You to get it checked out.

And I think from an athletic fitness perspective, if your pain occurs during exercise as opposed to after exercise, that's also a red flag. That means if your body can't tolerate the activity that you're doing, especially if it's right around a joint, you're feeling discomfort right around a joint, then that's bad pain. Typically, tendonitis is a big one. Sometimes stress fractures if you are running, which is like small cracks in the bone. Those are all red flags.

And to speak again from personal experience, when you are doing an activity or especially a sport, where it's moving in a bunch of different ways, or if you're in the gym and you're doing a bunch of different lifts and different movements, you can induce both delayed onset muscle soreness, kind of the good pain. And at the same time, overload, a tendon overload, a joint cause bad pain, cause tissue damage. will take much more time to heal. we can.

Understand this from a scientific standpoint, but in the heat of the moment in real life, it can be complex. And so it's a little bit of art and science. I'm trying to determine how hard you should be pushing and when you should back off and also when it's too late.

So how do we respond when we do have pain? Let's talk about how we can respond when we have good pain and what our actions are when we have bad pain. When you have good pain, when you have delayed onset muscle soreness, actually engaging in light activity is good. You're gonna be pumping blood to muscles. Typically these muscles are what's been overloaded, they've been damaged a little bit. And when you do gentle exercise with muscles that have delayed onset muscle soreness that has these DOMs, you actually can help facilitate

them healing quicker, feeling better quicker, decrease your soreness quicker. And it's a great way to keep the body moving and really kind of, again, get back on top of the game quicker. For people who run or bike, so again, I'm a cyclist, I can do a really hard day on the bike. Quads can be really sore. My legs can be really sore. And the next day, if I ride just very lightly for 15 or 20 minutes with almost no resistance on on the pedals, I actually feel a heck of a lot better. That soreness just goes away.

And the same thing with lifting weights. know, if you really overdue weightlifting one day, you know, you could take a day off. And if you go back to the gym the next day, if you just do those same motions, but lightly, you'll probably feel really good. You're probably, you're kicking that recovery into overdrive. The other things I would make sure to say is make sure you're well hydrated, eating nutritious foods, which is going to be the building blocks for recovering muscle anyhow, and sleep. I've done a bunch of episodes on sleep. It is the...

You know, it's like a legal drug. Sleep is great. We need to sleep. That's where your body's going to recover. Now, what do you do when you have bad pain? What can we do when we have bad pain? That is a time for you've heard of rice, those rest, ice, compression and elevation of wherever this discomfort is. think if you really have pain around a joint at a tendon that is not resolved, not going away within a week or 10 days, I would get

to see a professional, get to see a physical therapist, somebody that can really assess what it is and not let it linger and continue on far longer than it has to. This tissue specifically speaking of tendons, it is bad pain and it can take so long to heal. And I think what's really heartbreaking is when I see people come in to see me that some people try to treat themselves and they come up with some interesting ways on trying to stretch in weird ways or to...

push through it or to take Advil or take some sort of medication and keep working their way through it and can take an annoying injury and just prolong the duration to get back to it. And so when in doubt, seek medical professional, talk to your doctor, talk to somebody to make sure that it isn't going to be any longer duration recovery than it absolutely has to be.

The takeaway for pain, the takeaway for good pain versus bad pain is that there is a difference. Good pain, as we say, it is good. It can be indicative that you are stimulating your muscles to adapt, adapt stronger, adapt to have more durability, more physical capacity. That's great. When done well, delayed onset muscle soreness can be a good indicator that you are getting stronger and ultimately will have more capacity. Bad pain, on the other hand, is dangerous.

Whether it's an acute trip and fall, obviously get medical attention. That's not a good thing. Or if you are engaging in an activity that you haven't done in a while, or you really overdo it, whether that's lifting in the gym, whether it's going for a run or whether it's cleaning out your garage, whatever it is. And if you feel significant tenderness around the joint at where the of the bony parts of your joints are in the tendons that are right around it, that we're going to put in the bucket of bad pain.

and that bad pain is often sharp, often pretty intense, typically gets worse with activity. Like the more you move around, actually feels worse. That needs attention. That takes longer to heal. The first aid approach would be resting it, putting some ice on it, putting some compression on it, like a compressive sleeve or something on it around the joint and elevating it. And if still within a week or

10 days or so, if it's still a problem, please get medical advice. Please take the time, even if it's just a one -shot deal, talk to somebody who deals with this all the time, and maybe it's just giving you little bit of advice on how to manage it over the coming weeks, and then you're good to go. Don't let it drag on, especially for weeks at a time.

The one thing you can do today to extend your healthspan is if you have good pain, enjoy it. If you have bad pain, treat it or get help treating it.

I hope you found this episode of HealthSpan Digest helpful. There is a difference in pain. Not all pain is the same. Some of it is kind of good. Some of it is absolutely terrible and awful. Learning the difference between the two and learning how to embrace and finesse the good sort of pain can be great for extending our healthspan, being more durable, stronger, having more physical capacity. The bad pain, life -changing, absolutely negative, can ruin our healthspan.

cause great disability and only you can perceive your pain. So please take the time to learn what the difference between the two of them are and treat them differently.

I'm grateful for your time and attention and until next time, stay healthy, stay active and learn the difference between good pain and bad pain. If you have questions, when in doubt, drop me a message on my video on YouTube or send me a message through the podcast platforms. respond to all my messages. So until next time, cheers.